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Well, perhaps calling them scam artists might be going a tad too far. Front page of today’s Las Cruces Sun-News¹ reads:

Pizza scam partners: D’ough!
Duo used bad checks to buy pies, then resold by the slice, police say

Las Cruces, NM- Two men have been indicted for allegedly using forged checks to buy Domino’s pizza and the using a Pizza Hut Uniform to resell the pizzas - still in Domino’s boxes - for $5 [a slice].

Adolfo Martinez, 33, and Mark Anderson, 26, both of Las Cruces, were indicted Thursday each on 11 counts of forgery and one count of conspiracy.

According to a criminal complaint, from March 26 through April 2, the men wrote a total of 11 checks to an unspecified Las Cruces location of Domino’s

That is just absolutely brilliant. Let me tell you, there is absolutely nothing strange at all about a couple of guys going door to door, in a Pizza Hut uniform, selling Domino’s Pizza. Nope, nuh-uh, nothing strange there. Hand me a box will you?

Granted, I have seen pizza places have workers, usually equipped with pepperoni pizza, set up a van somewhere and sell pizzas cheap there. At $5 a box though, not $5 dollars a slice! It attracts consumers who normally wouldn’t travel to where their store is located and can drum up new customers as well. But really, someone going door to door to local businesses in uniform and selling a competitor’s product? Did no one’s warning bells go off? Apparently not, because the article goes on to say that these two did make a bit of a profit, though it doesn’t specify how much.

From the sound of it, the only clue that something was up came in when every check bounced and the same two men, with the same number, kept calling in to have the pizza delivered to them. Eventually Domino’s employees caught on that something was amiss.

Martinez and Anderson, both of whom list a lengthy arrest record in their indictments, remain jailed at the Dona Ana County Detention Center on a $60,000 bond each. If convicted, they each face a maximum of 34 and a half years in prison.

The “profit” they made could not have been worth this. Although, you have got to love how their maximum sentence each is twice as long then the sentence men serve for killing their spouses. Oh the irony.

1. I found this in the copy of the Sun-News I picked up today. I haven’t found an online link to the article on their website though. If you have access to print media, you can read this article in it’s entirety on the front page of the Las Cruces Sun-News, Tuesday edition, dated April 29th, 2008. 128th year, No.29 [↩]

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